FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 are diagrams each illustrating an example of a method of selecting characters on a display screen of a mobile terminal including a touch panel. In FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, a region selected by a user is different in background color from the other region, and is highlighted.
In the example illustrated in FIG. 1, a rectangle that encompasses an entire track of a finger of the user on the touch panel is determined as the region selected by the user, and characters included in the region are determined to be selected. For example, in the case where the user touches the touch panel along a track indicated by an arrow in FIG. 1, a region including characters A, B, C, D, and E is highlighted as a selection target region so as to encompass the entire track. The selection target region is a region that is determined to be selected through a selection operation by the user. The selection target region is an example of a “selected region”.
The example illustrated in FIG. 2 is a character selection process by a front-end processor (FEP) of a general touch panel. In the character selection process by the FEP, for example, the user touches (long taps) the touch panel for a predetermined period of time, whereby a predetermined range in the same row as the touched position as a reference is selected. The user can select characters by moving pointers respectively displayed at a starting point and a finishing point in the selected range.
For example, in the case where the user moves the pointer at the finishing point along a track indicated by an arrow in FIG. 2, characters continuous in units of one row are selected, and a row including the characters A and D, a row including the character B, and a row including the characters E and C are highlighted as the selection target region as illustrated in FIG. 2.